Halloween Window Clings

Making window gel clings is a very cute and easy way to decorate for holidays and seasons. This recipe for Halloween window clings is easy to follow, nontoxic, and can even be used as a hands-on Halloween science experiment for a classroom party!

Making Halloween Window Clings

Once we had all of our ingredients together we followed these instructions to make our Halloween gel clings:

Add gelatin all at once to the hot water. Use a whisk to stir to make sure it all dissolves. Spoon out any bubbles.

Pour the mixture into the baking sheet. You want it to be about a quarter of an inch thick (½ – ¾ cm). It doesn’t have to be exact, but make sure it is level.

Once the gelatin mixture has cooled a bit (10-15 minutes), invite the kids over. Have fun dropping food coloring into the gel and swirling it around with a toothpick. For extra flare, sprinkle glitter over the top or add a few beads or googly eyes. (Obviously, these can be a choking hazard to kids who are still putting things in their mouths. Use your best judgement with your own kids!)

You probably only have about 30 minutes before the gelatin starts to harden, so don’t dawdle!

When you are done decorating, let the gelatin harden for at least a couple of hours. Leaving it out uncovered overnight yields the best results.

Once it has set, use cookie cutters to cut out shapes or cut out your own shapes using a butter knife.

Use a spatula to carefully lift the gel shapes out of the pan. Don’t worry if they tear because you can simply mold them back together on the window. Stick them onto the windows and enjoy!

More Halloween STEM for Kids

If you are looking for even MORE fun and educational Halloween activities, be sure to check out STEAM Kids Halloween! It contains 50+ pages of spooky fun STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) activities that will wow the boredom right out of kids!

That’s a great question! We always stick them in our southern facing window that gets lots of sun and they stick just fine. Portland isn’t particularly hot most of the time, though 🙂 I would love to hear how it works when you give it a try.

What a cute idea, I bet this recipe whould be great for all sorts of shapes.. I think I’d love to have a go at making flowers and hearts with the girls, they’d look great on their bedroom windows! Thankyou for linking this up with #busydoinglife, it’s great to have you!

I would love to make these for my daughter’s Halloween Bat inspired Birthday party and give as favors. I plan to put them on transparency paper or something like it and wrap up lightly. How long will these last on the window? I read how they thin and dry, so will they last the couple of weeks through Halloween?

Hm, that may be tricky. I have never tried to transport them and I’m not sure how they will hold up. They stay squishy on the window for a few days, up to a week. After that they get thin and dry, but they still look really cool on the window and reflect the sunshine in the shape and color of the window gel. You may want to try to make them first and try transporting them like you plan to for the party and see how they hold up. If they fall apart you may want to consider making glow-in-the dark bat window gels instead? They are a lot more hardy: https://sciencekiddo.com/glow-in-the-dark-window-gel-clings/